From the rising curve of the Arthur Laing Bridge over the North Arm of the Fraser River, where the roadside signs include a caution to watch for low-flying aircraft, you get a glimpse of what suburban Canada is fast becoming.
Ahead the sky opens up and across the flatlands of the delta you see a maze of new condominium towers and construction cranes set against a hazy, blue Pacific.
Richmond, once a sleepy rural district on the outskirts of Vancouver, has been transformed by waves of recent immigrants into a bustling new centre of urban growth. It has become a small satellite city that seems a world away from the old English charm of the Tudor-style mansions on the Vancouver side of the river.
What just over a decade ago was farmland in Richmond has been transformed into sprawling housing tracts, subtopian malls, industrial parks, condo towers and a flurry of Chinese-language business signs.
All of this growth has been driven by a steady flow of immigrants, mostly from China and South Asia. It's part of a national trend that is making the suburbs bigger, busier and more ethnically diverse.
According to several years of census data for 15 suburbs, analyzed by The Globe and Mail, the nation is undergoing a sweeping demographic shift as waves of immigrants settle in and around the major urban centres. In the process the suburbs are being transformed.
Visible minorities are on the rise nationally -- climbing from 11 per cent of the population in 1996 to 13 per cent in 2001 -- but nowhere is that more pronounced than in suburbia. In Richmond, 59 per cent of the total population were visible minorities in 2001, up from 49 per cent just five years earlier.
Burnaby (49 per cent) and in Ontario, Markham, (56 per cent), and Richmond Hill, Mississauga and Brampton (all at 40 per cent), have all grown at a similar rapid rate.
In Richmond, 80 per cent of all recent immigrants now come from just five countries: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and the Philippines.
Richmond exploded during the mid-1990s when a wave of immigrants arrived from Hong Kong, anticipating the return of the British colony to Chinese rule. Since then there has been a shift to immigrants from China, from where almost 30 per cent of recent immigrants originate.
"The last five houses on my block all sold to families from mainland China," says realtor Cynthia Chen, who has noticed the change.
Richmond's population grew by 71 per cent between 1981 and 2001. This rapid growth brought problems to the community, where schools are under pressure to integrate large numbers of students who have English as a second language and where there is a constant struggle to bridge the barriers between diverse cultural groups.
Mostly, however, the story of Richmond is one of a community that has been energized by newcomers who have given the once sleepy suburb a whole new look and feel.
You sense the energy as you enter the community, with jets dropping altitude across the highway, roaring in to land at Vancouver International Airport on Sea Island, the first entry point for most Asian immigrants to Canada.
Moments after entering Richmond you pass the site of the new Aerospace campus of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, a construction crew pounding away at a rapid-transit line to Vancouver, and a vast sand field on Lulu Island, where the Richmond Olympic Oval is being built for the 2010 Games.
Sherman Tai, an immigrant from Hong Kong who has carved out a career as a feng shui consultant, describes this convergence of energy as the qi of Richmond.
Qi, which is pronounced "chee," is a Chinese term for the life force believed to exist in everything and about which Mr. Tai is an expert. He advised the City of Richmond on the feng shui of city hall, so that the qi could be released, and is providing similar advice on the Olympic Oval.
Lying as it does between the ocean, the North Shore mountains and three arms of the Fraser River, Mr. Tai says Asians see Richmond as perfectly placed to prosper.
"Vancouver is the edge of the mountains and mountains, from the feng shui aspect, is the dragon," Mr. Tai says. "And then the dragon is chasing the pearl and Richmond is the pearl . . . at the same time we have the duplication of the qi from the water . . . the ocean, the river.
